MLB Pipeline Pitching Lab: Travis Sykora
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WILMINGTON, Del. -- Travis Sykora has heard the comps plenty, and honestly, you could do a lot worse if you tried to build a Nolan Ryan clone in a lab.
It isn’t perfect, of course. The 6-foot-6 Sykora has 4 inches on the 6-foot-2 Ryan. The Hall of Famer also has 5,714 career Major League strikeouts on the Nationals prospect. But look up Sykora’s hometown of Round Rock, Texas (where there’s a Minor League team named after the Ryan Express), watch the high leg kick of his delivery and allow yourself to dream a little.
“I know Nolan Ryan talked about, for him, using the weight of his front leg to create momentum toward the plate,” Sykora said. “It helped him throw hard efficiently throughout the game and throughout the season. It wasn't just his strength doing all the work. So yeah, I got the high leg kick. I also do it to tuck my pelvis and get my right hip under my left hip. That way I can sink into my hip in internal rotation, like I couldn't do last year.
“After that, I really don't think about anything. I set myself up, get my body in the right positions, and it just unwinds.”
Coming off offseason hip surgery, Washington’s top prospect certainly has been putting up some Ryan-esque numbers in the Minors. Since returning to the mound in the Rookie-level Florida Complex League on May 3, Sykora sports a 1.13 ERA and a 0.50 WHIP with 45 strikeouts and only five walks in seven starts (24 innings) between the FCL, Single-A Fredericksburg and High-A Wilmington. He’s struck out 53.6 percent of his batters faced, making him the only Minor Leaguer with a K rate north of 50 over at least 20 frames.
The 21-year-old right-hander is still getting going in the 2025 campaign, having posted his first five-inning start last Friday, but signs continue to point to another dominant campaign on his way to the capital. We caught up with MLB Pipeline's No. 58 overall prospect in Wilmington to chat about his mechanics, recovery and arsenal in this edition of the MLB Pipeline Pitching Lab:
THE HIP AND THE DELIVERY
Sykora admitted he battled through hip issues in both his Draft year in 2023 and his first full season last summer. Despite that, he still signed with the Nationals for $2.6 million as a third-rounder and finished with a 2.33 ERA and 129 K’s in 85 innings with the Carolina League-champion FredNats.
“Focusing more on the hip than I did actually pitching and training, it became a lot,” he said. “Now when I show up to the field, my only focus is working on my splitter, doing my velocity training. When I got to the field, I’m not worried about the hip anymore. It’s just healthy. Obviously, it’s nice to be able to throw with your whole body and not being all arm like I was last year.”
That isn’t to say there hasn’t been an adjustment period, in a good way.
Sykora said he's still adjusting to the new range of motion afforded to him by the offseason procedure. His velocity is up (more on that below), and he has better command of his trademark splitter.
“Last year, I would spin open and miss armside with half the splitters I threw,” he said. “Now that I can back into my hip, I can actually get on top of the ball and drive that splitter down. That’s the pitch I’ve been throwing more than I ever have in my whole life.”
Beyond the added fluidity, there’s one other thing fans should watch for in Sykora’s delivery in 2025 and beyond: a double rock in his windup. Even that has a connection to the hip improvements.
“I’m using my long limbs to my advantage,” he said. “Instead of someone who throws real basic -- maybe he’s 6-1 with short limbs -- I’m 6-6 with long limbs. The double rock, people think it’s funny, but it helps me actually get in my back hip, something I’ve done my whole life and last year I couldn’t really do it as well.”
FOUR-SEAM FASTBALL
So about that velocity.
Sykora averaged 93.3 mph on his heater in 2024, according to Synergy. It was still an effective pitch at Single-A, generating whiffs on 32.9 percent of swings, but it wasn’t quite at the level that made the righty such a prominent pick the year earlier.
This season, that average in Fredericksburg and Wilmington games is up to 95.4 mph, per the same tracking system. It isn’t perfect -- Sykora has only 87 four-seamers registered in the system between those two levels in ‘25 -- but it backs up his previous statement about the benefits of the hip surgery. The whiff rate has jumped to 39.0 percent too, as Sykora combines the improved velo with decent movement out of his low three-quarters slot.
“The way I work, it’s feel-based training,” he said. “When I feel like I’m staying behind the ball, I have a little more ride than most guys do. It’s not anything crazy, but that’s why I like to stay up in the zone. … If I’m averaging 17-18 inches of ride, that’s when I know it’s working well. Also the extension, that’s another metric I look at. I like to stay as close as I can to 7 feet. Throwing 99 but also having that extension, it makes it even tougher on the batter.”
Never mind 99, Sykora has touched triple digits since joining Wilmington, something he told the Nationals was a goal of his entering 2025.
SLIDER
Speaking of feel, Sykora might not have more of a feel pitch than his low-80s slider. While others may prefer to put both their pointer and middle fingers on the inside of the horseshoe to twirl the breaking ball, the Nationals righty has found the most comfort in splitting the lace between his fingers -- a grip that enables him to command the pitch and alter its shape depending on his needs.
“If a lefty’s in the box and I have a 0-0 count and need to get ahead, honestly I think a little more depth, more like a curveball,” he said. “Especially with a righty or trying to backfoot a slider to a lefty when I’m trying to get swing-and-miss, it’s going to have a little more sweep.”
That ability to manipulate the slider has made it extremely effective at Sykora’s two full-season levels in ‘25. He’s gotten 21 misses on 35 recorded swings against it, per Synergy, for a whiff rate of 60 percent, and those 21 whiffs are pretty well distributed -- 12 from lefties, nine from righties.
Of course, that’s coming against what are still low-level hitters who lack the discipline to not expand the zone against the 21-year-old's best gloveside mover (especially when sitting on the riding four-seamer). Case in point: Sykora’s 38 percent chase rate is the highest among his three pitch types. That could come down in Double-A, Triple-A and the Majors, and that’s something Washington coaches like pitching coordinator Sam Narron have specifically called attention to.
“My High-A debut, it was a great, great outing, but he called me in the locker room and said, hey if you could take back one pitch, what would it be,’” Sykora said. “I didn’t know, but he said, 'Hey, you threw a 3-2 slider and I could see you trying to get to chase outside the zone and you ended up walking him. You didn’t have the same intent like you usually do in the other 99 percent of pitches.' … That’s always my thought process, but ever since we talked about it two weeks ago, it’s been on my mind.”
SPLITTER
How many hurlers can say they picked up a pitch in an actual firehouse? Maybe start the list with Sykora, whose father Frank worked with former independent-ball pitcher Troy Hirsch as a firefighter and turned the young pitcher onto what’s become a plus offering.
“He was just basically teaching me how to throw the ball over the plate,” Sykora said, “but sometimes, we’d mess around with a forkball at the end of our bullpens.”
Sykora has tried other changeup grips over the years, seeing if anything could stick, but nothing quite worked as well for him as the one in which he wedges the ball between his pointer and middle finger. He incorporated the splitter when he began working as a starter at Round Rock High in 2022 and hasn’t looked back much.
And why would he? He’s thrown the mid-80s offering on 17 percent of his tracked pitches in 2025 (up from 13 percent in ‘24) and gotten whiffs on nine of 16 swings (56.3 percent) in the early going. It has almost perfectly 10 mph separation from his four-seamer. As Sykora aims for under 1,000 rpm, it can have the tumble to fade down and away from lefties, who are just 5-for-40 (.125) with 22 strikeouts against Sykora at all levels this season.
In other words, it’s its own type of firehose with the way it stops hitters from getting hot.
“Fastball, changeup, slider, that’s pretty typical,” Sykora said. “To be able to have a unique pitch, I think it changes [things]. When the hitters go up there, they’re not used to what they’re seeing.”